


Paint's Peeling

by theswearingkind



Category: Brokeback Mountain (2005)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-27
Updated: 2013-10-27
Packaged: 2017-12-28 21:32:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/996936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theswearingkind/pseuds/theswearingkind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack doesn't die, but that doesn't necessarily spell out a happy ending.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paint's Peeling

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to the LJ comm brokebackslash in 2006. One-shot.

Making it to November takes some doing, but it gets done. That never-ending waiting finally ends, and the postcard he sends down to Texas gets one sent back, just two words, _you bet_.

He baits cops all the way there, pushing his old truck up to speeds it’s never seen before, catches himself leaning forward in the seat. Gets to the site a little before noon, and even though Jack’s not there he doesn’t think on it. He’s never been the first one there before. Makes a nice change.

The first couple of hours slip by unnoticed, what with chopping wood for the fire and watering the horses, but by four o’clock he starts to get real jumpy, fire ants in his bloodstream. Jack’s never been this late, and damn it, doesn’t he know how bad it’s been, jerking off every night, seven months with only this week to look forward to? Finally Ennis stretches out in the seat of his truck, pulls his hat over his eyes to try and get some sleep. He can’t get comfortable. He spends near forty-five minutes adjusting and re-adjusting himself until he hears an engine rumbling from not too far away, jumps out of the truck, has to grip the door handle until his knuckles turn white to keep from running out to meet him.

The station wagon cuts off, and Jack lumbers out, shuts the door soft with barely a click, like he’s reluctant to leave the confines of the car. He looks different, younger and older at the same time, and Ennis realizes that he’s gotten rid of the mustache. Good, he thinks, looked fuckin’ ridiculous anyhow. He almost starts to Jack, then waits, thinking Jack will come to him. But he doesn’t.

They stay like that, Jack squared off, hands on his hips, Ennis chomping at the bit, one hand latched to the truck door handle like a life preserver, for too long, until at last Jack gives in, makes it easy on him. “H’lo, friend,” he says.

“Jack,” he says in reply, more in his voice than he could put into words.

Jack paws the ground, restless, a skittish colt. He looks at the fire, the horses tied to a post, and paws the ground some more, raking away what’s left of the grass, leaving just packed dirt. “I see you got the horses a’gin.”

“Got the fire goin’ too,” Ennis says, shoving his hands into his coat pockets, clenching them into fists for wanting Jack so bad.

“I—I wish you hadn’ta done that, Ennis. I came late thinkin’ I might catch you, save you the trouble.”

Ennis finally moves, just two or three steps closer, but it seems like a lot more to his Jack-starved body. “Weren’t no trouble, Jack.”

Jack backs up, three small steps away. All this time and finally he’s the one moving away. “Ennis, I—how your girls?”

Ennis blinks, thrown off by the sudden change of subject, but answers all the same. “They doin’ fine, Jack. How’s Bobby?”

“Doin’ good, doin’ real good. Gonna play cornerback next season.”

“That’s real fine, Jack.” In all their years, not once has a trip started with family discussion.

Jack nods. “Yeah.”

The distance between them is so wide Jack might as well be back in Texas.

Ennis is not a man of words, but he makes the effort. “You alright, Jack?” he asks. “Everythin’ fine with you? Normal?”

Jack looks at him, blue eyes with everything behind them. “Everythin’ fine, Ennis.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then.” Ennis stares at his boots, hoping for help. They offer none. “Well then,” he says again, minutes or possibly years later. Jack looks at him again, and with that mustache gone he looks nineteen again, looks like he did the first day Ennis knew what it would be like to lose himself inside another man, and did.

And then the space between them is gone, and he has Jack up against the side of that ugly-ass car, his skin hot as flame, rough hands surrounding Jack’s face, tangled in his hair, pushing desperately at the buttons on Jack’s coat, searching for skin like a drowning man for air. That good Jack-taste, whiskey and tobacco and something else Ennis didn’t know the name for, and a smell like soap and shoe leather, and for one blessed God moment, he feels arms around his back, tastes the depth of Jack’s need, still so big he could fall forever and not reach bottom.

Jack’s voice cuts into him like a blade. “No. Ennis, no, lemme go. Ennis, stop—no, Ennis—no, I said—I—no. I’m not gonna do it, Ennis, not this a’gin.”

He pulls away, panting, sees Jack red-faced and shamed, wiping at his mouth with his coat sleeve, mumbling.

“This ‘bout last time we was out here? God, Jack, I’m a shit, I know it, you know it, reckon all Wyomin’ know it, but—look here, we don’t gotta get into it right now. Unpack your stuff, we’ll get settled. No need to make it worse’n it has to be.”

Jack shakes his head. “Ain’t ‘bout last time, Ennis. Least, it ain’t just ‘bout last time. This been comin’ for—Ennis, I didn’t bring no gear. No tent, nor clothes—nothin’. I wasn’t plannin’ on stayin’. That there—I shouldn’ta done that, an’ wouldn’ta if you hadn’t come at me like you did, takin’ me by surprise.”

“What you sayin’, Jack?” Ennis asks, even though he knows.

“Ennis, I’m movin’ up to Lightnin’ Flat. Gonna take charge of my daddy’s place, get it runnin’ smooth.”

“You leavin’ Texas.”

“Yeah. Leavin’ my boy, and Lureen, an’ my life down there. Gonna move out to a piece of shit ranch in the middle of nowhere, an’ start all over, an’ I ain’t doin’ it by myself.”

He can barely see around the blood clouding his vision, but his voice works just fine, low and dangerous. “Who you plannin’ on takin’ with you, Jack Twist?”

Jack shakes his head, hands in pockets. “None of your concern, Ennis.”

“Like fuck. Who?”

“I ain’t tellin’ you, Ennis.”

He stalks closer, an animal on his prey. “Ask you this just once, Jack, an’ you best believe it ain’t no joke. Who you takin’ with you? Reckon I mean what I said last time: I’ll kill you, make no mistake.”

Jack meets his gaze without flinching. “You feel like you need to kill me, you go right ahead. But I am not tellin’ you one goddamn thing. You don’t get that—you don’t deserve it.”

Ennis almost laughs, a hard, bitter sound. “Don’t deserve it? I stuck with you for twenty fuckin’ years an’ now I don’t even get so much as a by-your-leave?”

“What you think this is, Del Mar? Why you think I come out here, ‘cept to tell you face to face?”

“You best say it then. You say the goddamn words an’ then you see if I don’t kill you for sayin’ ‘em.”

“No.”

A hard shove to the chest. “Say it.”

Jack shakes his head again. “No.”

Another shove. “Say it, cowboy. You say it right now.”

“Ennis, I am not tellin’ you nothin’—”

Ennis pushes Jack so hard this time that he stumbles backward, almost falls before he catches himself on the side of his station wagon. “Say it, goddamn you!” Ennis roars, startled by the sound, never heard himself so loud. “You tell me, you fuckin’ queer, you tell me or I’ll kill you right now, swear to God I will rip you limb from fuckin’ limb ‘til there ain’t no part of you that don’t ache like the Second Comin’ swept over you, I fuckin’ will, I swear—”

Jack lashes out, a fist to the jaw, the sharp crack of knuckle on bone and Ennis loses his balance, goes down. His lip busts and he spits blood, cradling his face, and it’s such a small thing, such a small, small thing, that for the first time Jack doesn’t respond to Ennis in pain.

“Ennis,” he says, raw as a fresh wound. “You can punch me, hit me, do whatever you want. But I am not tellin’ you a damn thing. You string me along twenty years, knowin’ it never gonna change but lettin’ me think—well, friend, I am fuckin’ tired of it. You say I made you this way, made you the nothin’ you are. I’m the reason you ain’t done nothin’ or been nowhere or b’come no one. Maybe that so. So I’m not gonna do it no more. I make you so fuckin’ miserable as you say I do? Why you keep comin’ out here all these years then, huh? I’m gonna be forty in less’n a year, Ennis. That’ll be twenty-one years of you an’ your shit. Forty ain’t nineteen, you sonuvabitch, and I ain’t got the energy to deal with you no more.”

Ennis doesn’t move, can’t, stares at the ground through blurry eyes. Verdict returned, guilty as charged, but he defends himself on the one count that he can. “I told you,” he says, marble-mouthed. “I told you it weren’t never gonna be what you wanted it to be. I didn’t let you think nothin’, told you how it was gonna be when it started. You went ‘long with it anyhow. That ain’t my fault an’ you can’t make it so for wishin’.”

Jack stands over him, hands on his hips, and looks at the mountains. “Lots of things I wanted that wishin’ couldn’t make so, Ennis.”

“Jack,” he says finally, “I—I have to know, friend.”

“Ennis—”

“I reckon you got plenty you could say to me ‘bout why you shouldn’t tell me nothin’. Maybe it all true. But Jack, I ain’t asked you but for damn few things these years, an’ I am askin’ for this. I aim to know, cowboy. I tell you I’ve fuckin’ got to.”

The blue in Jack’s eyes swims, and he dashes his arm angrily across his face. “I swear to God, Ennis. You will be the death of me one day.” He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, fumbles for one, and takes too long to light it before inhaling, a long sad drag like loneliness. “First you gonna kill me for tellin’ you, now you gonna kill me if I don’t. Don’t see why you get to change the rules up so sudden.”

“Jack.”

He nods, refusing to meet Ennis’s eyes, and has to take a deep breath before he talks. “He works for an old friend of Lureen’s daddy. Got a wife with a mouth on her like nothin’ I ever heard. She could talk a deaf man crazy.”

His name, Ennis thinks, tell me his name. Tell me his name an’ he’s dead by sunup.

“He’s younger than us. Thirty-four, thirty-five, somethin’ like that. No kids—said he never wanted ‘em, and she can’t have ‘em nohow, so that works out.”

“What’s his name?”

There’s a silence that seems to say everything and nothing all at once. “Ennis, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”

“That is one long fuckin’ name, Jack Twist. Tell me.”

“Name’s Randall,” Jack says, sighing heavily. The words are sudden, like a cold splash of water, stinging and painful. It’s real now, this thing. It has a name and a wife and no kids. It has Jack.

Ennis seems to have lost what little capacity for speech he ever had, his tongue lying in his mouth like wet wool. He moves to the fire for warmth, but none comes.

“Why you do this to me, Ennis? I was gonna be strong, gonna tell you good-bye and walk back out, an’ then—what is it ‘bout you that I can’t stop myself?”

“Stopped yourself fine back there,” he mumbles in reply, so low nobody but Jack could ever hear it, but hear it Jack does.

“That weren’t for me, friend, that were for him,” Jack says, angry now. “I ain’t gonna do him like I done you, always sneakin’ off, worryin’ ‘bout gettin’ caught, thinkin’ on somebody else all the time. I’m gonna do right by him, ‘cause you never would let me do right by you.” He stubs out his cigarette, crushes it with the toe of his boot. “I’m leavin’ now, Ennis, an’ I don’t expect that we’ll be seein’ each other a’gin, so you--you take care.”

He’s in the car, engine started, before Ennis finds his voice again. He comes to the car window. “How long?” The question isn’t very specific, but Jack knows.

He stares hard at his fingers on the steering wheel. “Since the divorce,” he says, no feeling behind the words.

Ennis turns away so Jack will not see him turn pale at seven years. “Get outta here, Jack,” he chokes out. “Now, ‘fore I—” He starts to stumble away, world a mess of green and white.

The engine cuts off. A car door slams behind him, then footsteps on the ground, hands on his arms. “Ennis!”

“You love him?” he asks, finally, uses the word he’s never used before, but not for them.

Everything stills. “Love him? Ennis, I—hell. Shit. I—look at me, Ennis. Look at me!” Jack spins him around so they are face-to-face, breaths apart. “Ennis, I have loved one person in my whole miserable goddamn existence, an’ it sure ain’t him. I never said it ‘fore this, so I’m sayin’ it now: I love you. I fuckin’ love you, an’ I have loved you since I was nineteen years old, an’ I will love you ‘til the day Satan drags me off down to hell for lovin’ you so, an’ even then I still won’t be able to stop lovin’ you. There is nobody on the face of this earth that I love ‘cept you. I love you, I love you, I love you, an’ ain’t nothin’ gonna change that. But you don’t want it, Ennis."

Silence like winter.

"You don’t want it. An’ he does.”

Nothing much to say to that.

Let be, let be.


End file.
